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#MCS09: Interconnect Charge Worries Plague VAS Companies

A significant point of discussion that has been repeated through quite a few sessions at IAMAI Mobile Content and Services conference today, is that of mobile termination charges that might be implemented by telecom operators in India, specifically for enterprise services. This means, that when a marketing or content SMS is being sent from one telecom operators network to another, as a part of its enterprise service, an additional charge will have to be paid. Both Kumar Apoorva, COO, ValueFirst and Abhijit Saxena, CEO of Netcore that runs the MyToday free SMS service mentioned the same at the conference, as did Beerud Sheth, CEO of SMS Gupshup in a yet-to-be published interview with MediaNama. Kumar said that "There are organizations that have built their businesses circumventing the telecom operator ecosystem, and now there is a situation where they will implement interconnect charges. The regulators will keep sitting, and by the time they respond, it will be too late. At an additional 10-15 paise per SMS, the (enterprise) consumers will end up paying more. The only people it adds value to is the operator." During the session on Mobile Marketing, Saxena said that the viability of the mobile medium for marketing will significantly come to question if interconnect charged are brought it, and it is a cause for concern. Sheth was more circumspect, telling MediaNama that "The cost of messages is a variable that we have to deal with in our business, but it also related to revenues for us. It has…

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Written By

Founder @ MediaNama. TED Fellow. Asia21 Fellow @ Asia Society. Co-founder SaveTheInternet.in and Internet Freedom Foundation. Advisory board @ CyberBRICS

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